The epidemiological evidence for exposure to microplastic and nanoplastic particles to be harmful and contribute to age-related disease is sparse at this time, with nowhere near as sizable a weight of compelling evidence as exists for the analogous topic of particulate air pollution. This may be a matter of time, however; give it another two decades and the fields might look quite similar. Or they might not! It is too early to say. There is a lot of hype and excitement around the topic, so it seems likely that the necessary large human studies to establish and quantify any meaningful contribution to age-related disease will be conducted in the years to come. Meanwhile, the first few smaller studies suggesting that such a contribution exists are attracting a fair amount of attention.
Microplastics - defined as fragments of plastic between 1 nanometer and 5 millimeters across - are released as larger pieces of plastic break down. They come from many different sources, such as food and beverage packaging, consumer products and building materials. People can be exposed to microplastics in the water they drink, the food they eat and the air they breathe.
The study examines associations between the concentration of microplastics in bodies of water and the prevalence of various health conditions in communities along the East, West and Gulf Coasts, as well as some lakeshores, in the United States between 2015-2019. While inland areas also contain microplastics pollution, researchers focused on lakes and coastlines because microplastics concentrations are better documented in these areas. They used a dataset covering 555 census tracts from the National Centers for Environmental Information that classified microplastics concentration in seafloor sediments as low (zero to 200 particles per square meter) to very high (over 40,000 particles per square meter).
The researchers assessed rates of high blood pressure, diabetes, stroke, and cancer in the same census tracts in 2019 using data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They also used a machine learning model to predict the prevalence of these conditions based on patterns in the data and to compare the associations observed with microplastics concentration to linkages with 154 other social and environmental factors such as median household income, employment rate, and particulate matter air pollution in the same areas.
The results revealed that microplastics concentration was positively correlated with high blood pressure, diabetes, and stroke, while cancer was not consistently linked with microplastics pollution. The results also suggested a dose relationship, in which higher concentrations of microplastic pollution are associated with a higher prevalence of disease. However, researchers said that evidence of an association does not necessarily mean that microplastics are causing these health problems. More studies are required to determine whether there is a causal relationship or if this pollution is occurring alongside another factor that leads to health issues, they said.
Link: https://www.acc.org/...Chronic-Disease
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